Monitor/television devices such as LCD or Plasma televisions have a bezel surrounding the actual display device (LCD panel, Plasma panel, CRT, etc). There have been many colors and varieties of bezels. Most bezels on current monitor/television products are black, while bezels on notebook computers and monitors are often colored to match the color of the shell of the notebook computer or monitor, sometimes white, black, dark blue, etc.
There are many reasons for different bezel appearances. Some bezels reflect a trade dress of the manufacturer of the monitor/television, often having an embossed logo. Some bezels include a lighted word, usually the manufacturer's name such as, “Vizio.” Some bezels are colored to coordinate, or at least, not clash with their environment. For this reason, many current television manufacturers select a black color for their bezels, since black goes with many different environments.
Another reason for different colored bezels is to reduce distraction away from the viewed picture, movie, text, etc. In some cases, a strongly contrasting bezel may lead to eye strain. This contrast issue is difficult to address with a fixed-color bezel, since it is difficult to predict what will be displayed in the display area of the monitor/television. For example, a light-colored bezel would blend well with text displayed on a white page but would not blend well with a movie, especially during scenes that are dark. Likewise, a dark or black colored bezel would blend well with the movie but would be distracting when viewing, for example, text on a white page.
One solution is to provide a monitor or television with interchangeable bezels so that the end user is able to select a bezel from a limited set of colors such as black, white and silver. This helps blend the bezel with the environment, for example when the monitor/television is used in a modern-styled home with predominately white colors, the standard black bezel can be exchanged or covered with a white bezel. This solution does not provide for varying the bezel color/appearance with respect to variations of the displayed subject matter, does not provide indications of internal metadata or status and does not solve the problem of a varying environment such as daytime vs. nighttime viewing. Furthermore, this solution is limited to a small set of bezel colors.
What is needed is a bezel that changes color based upon user control and/or internal or external data to match the environment and/or displayed content and/or information.